Passive-Aggressive Fight Against Plutonium Economy

Late on a Friday afternoon (September 23), the Department of Energy released an updated performance report on the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). DOE’s internal Office of Project Management Oversight and Assessment in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers produced the report using assumptions and data provided by DOE leadership.

The report concludes that if the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — the semi-independent branch of the DOE that is running the project — continues managing and supporting the MFFF with the same enthusiasm and oversight that it has been investing for the past half dozen years, the facility won’t be completed until 2048. It will cost $12.5 billion more than has already been spent.

In addition to being able to point to one more in a lengthy series of reports documenting historic cost expansion, predicting excessive future cost and proposing an excruciatingly slow delivery schedule, MFFF opponents claim that there is no demand for the fuel assemblies that the facility will eventually produce. They also claim there is a cheaper, quicker and easier alternative.

Disinterested observers with any fiscal conservatism should immediately conclude that the best course of action would be to halt construction now and pursue the suggested alternative. That’s the reaction that the report sponsors appear to be seeking.

Observers with more historical perspective will recognize that the 2016 MFFF performance update is just the latest document in a thick stack of words and paper produced in the decades-long passive-aggressive political battle to prevent using plutonium for peace.

That assessment can be confirmed by reviewing the project history, including the culpability of DOE and NNSA project management and oversight along with understanding how the provided assumptions drive the report’s conclusions.

Roots Of U. S. Plutonium Prohibition Policies

Plutonium is a naturally-occurring product of supernova explosions that is so rare that it was long considered to be man-made. The truth is that there just aren’t any Pu isotopes with a long enough half life to still be detectable in a solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Pu was first isolated by a University of California-Berkeley team led by Glenn Seaborg and named for the then-planet of Pluto. The choice was a logical completion of a series of elements named for the three outermost planets of our solar system Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Though its first use was in explosives, scientists and engineers have always recognized that plutonium has vast potential as a fuel source. Like U-235, the only naturally fissile isotope, Pu-239 and Pu-241 can be readily split to release about 1-2 million times as much energy as burning similar mass of petroleum. Plutonium’s real attraction to specialists is the fact that it can be readily produced from U-238, which is a mostly useless isotope that represents 99.3% of naturally occurring uranium.

By designing reactors that create and use plutonium, it’s theoretically possible to multiply the available uranium fuel resource by as much 140 times. That prospect has excited thousands of scientists and engineers and stimulated worldwide interest in breeder reactor programs from the earliest days of controlled nuclear energy.

Even without breeding, plutonium is a useful fuel source; 25-40% of the energy produced during the reactor residence time of conventional nuclear fuel comes from plutonium fission. As soon as a fresh nuclear fuel rod begins fissioning, some of the U-238 that makes up about 95% of the fuel element begins absorbing neutrons and turning into plutonium to fission upon the next neutron absorption.

Way back in the early 1970s, special interest organizations and individuals began working diligently to discourage what Glenn Seaborg’s Atomic Energy Commission had described as the “plutonium economy.” By the mid-1970s, the effort to demonize plutonium and prevent breeder reactor commercialization gained enough momentum to become a campaign issue for the 1976 Presidential race.

As a result of the political pressure applied by his nearly unknown rival, President Ford placed a temporary moratorium on nuclear fuel recycling in October 1976. After President Carter’s inauguration, he made the prohibition as permanent as possible through the issuance of an executive order. The U.S. stopped pursuing purposeful plutonium use until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Aside: I’m convinced that fear of the plutonium economy was created and stoked by people who really liked the way the hydrocarbon economy was working for them. End Aside.

Weapons Material Disposition

During the 1990s, the U. S. and the former Soviet Union took several steps towards reducing dependence on nuclear weapons. As warheads were dismantled, the purified materials (U-235 and Pu-239) used to create them became surplus and in need of permanent disposition. Both U-235 and Pu-239 need to be treated to enable disposition; without altering the material, it is possible to reconfigure it into a deliverable warhead.

The highly enriched uranium (HEU) used for a portion of the arsenals was easiest to alter. Blending the purified material with natural or depleted uranium resulted in a material that was chemically and physically identical to the low-enriched uranium (LEU) used by commercial reactors.

The blending and consuming process took 20 years. From 1993-2013 the Megatons to Megawatts program turned 500 metric tons of Russian HEU (enough for 20,000 warheads) into 14,000 tons of LEU. That LEU provided about 50% of the U.S. supply of nuclear fuel at a time when nuclear power produced 20% of the nation’s electricity.

Few Americans know that 10% of the electricity consumed in the United States between 1994 and 2014 came from fissioning material that had once been part of the Russian nuclear weapons inventory.

About the same time that the US and Russia agreed to dispose of HEU, they also began discussions for an agreement that would permanently eliminate part of their plutonium inventories. The discussions began in the late 1990s and have produced several versions of an agreement.

The Russians have taken a simple, valuable and relatively inexpensive path for converting their plutonium into a form that cannot be used in warheads. For the reported equivalent of a few hundred million dollars, they built a facility that manufactures the surplus weapons material into fuel for their fast reactor program.

Political prohibition and a successful plutonium demonization campaign has made it much more politically difficult and expensive for the US to eliminate its surplus weapons-grade plutonium. So far, no plutonium has been permanently eliminated in the U.S.

Passive Resistance To Beneficial Use Has Been Successful

The first version of the US plan included a two-track approach. In one track, part of the Pu-239 would be mixed with enough radioactive fission products to approach what was called a “spent fuel standard” that could then be immobilized in a glass or other inert material matrix. The second track was a Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility modeled after the long-established French system.

There were numerous technical challenges associated with the concept of direct disposal using a “spent fuel standard” that were never addressed or solved. It was promoted by some as a less complicated way to eliminate a nuisance, but the underlying motivation was clearly a desire to avoid producing energy with a declared waste product.

The MOX path was almost immediately made as complicated as possible by involving both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy in the review, approval and regulatory role for the project. As Commissioner Nils Diaz commented in 1998 during agency discussions about the proposed regulatory structure,

And a second comment — you know, just for the record — there is probably, you know, one regulatory structure that can be created that is more cumbersome and more complex than the DOE or the NRC, and that is a mix — DOE and NRC.

Eventually, the “spent fuel standard” path was eliminated, leaving just the MOX path. As Diaz expected, the review and licensing process was complex and cumbersome. It wasn’t completed until late 2005 and even that was after splitting the process into a two-step construct of beginning with a construction permit that would eventually be followed with an operating license. Finally, in 2007, the DOE began building the MFFF even though there were a number of design details that were not yet complete.

At least as early as the first half of 2011, there have been serious enough reservations about the progress of the MFFF construction project to raise calls for cancellation.

By 2013, the DOE budget submitters had begun proposing that the project be placed in cold standby while options were evaluated. While it was once funded at $500 million per year, the budget requests for the past four years have been in the range of $250 – $350 million, which is just a bit more than the continuing overhead for the project.

With continuing funding uncertainty and a declining project reputation made worse by proclamations from the project sponsor, it has been difficult for the MFFF contractors to attract and retain the talented management and inspired workers needed to complete a challenging, one-of-a-kind project in a relatively remote part of the country.

Despite all of the hurdles erected, the project has moved forward, but at a pace that does not satisfy anyone.

There is no happy resolution for this mess.

The dilute and dispose alternative using the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) does not exist; there are numerous barriers that have not begun to be addressed. These include, but are not limited to 1) lack of agreement with Russia 2) lack of authorization to use WIPP for diluted weapons material 3) lack of authorized WIPP capacity 4) lack of facilities to perform the dilution 5) lack of isotopic changes to prevent the material from being recovered for weapons use.

It is possible that continued efforts to complete the MFFF as currently designed and approved would be a mistake, but there is no doubt that starting a different process at this point is fraught with unknown challenges and is farther from completion.

Though the contractor companies working on the project are not perfect, the blame for the project’s current status should be placed with the responsible agency and its purposeful lack of commitment to mission accomplishment. There should be accountability for the fruitless expenditures of taxpayer money and the wasteful misuse of valuable government assets.

Though it’s really challenging in a complex executive agency to assign accountability for a failure to follow congressional directives, in this case I would begin by questioning Kevin Knobloch, the DOE Chief of Staff, a man who was the Executive Director of the avowedly anti-plutonium Union of Concerned Scientists before being selected for his current government position.

Sadly, the Administration’s dithering on a path for permanently — by altering the isotopic mix — eliminating 34 tons of weapons grade plutonium from the U.S. weapons program inventory has succeeded in making our relations with Russia even worse than they already were. Vladimir Putin recently announced that Russia would be withdrawing from the plutonium Disposition Management Agreement due to the U.S.’s failure to make any progress.

Unfortunately, it is far easier to create havoc and increase costs for a federal program than it is to either complete it or kill it.

Reader Interactions

Comments

From a technical feasibility perspective, would Naval Reactors be able to incorporate the Pu239 as fuel for reactors? I would think NR would have to launch a program to determine the best usage and operating characteristics but I am sure that it would be cheaper than anything we are doing on the civilian side. Also, I doubt Russia would agree to it, but then again they are withdrawing from the agreement anyhow. This would allow us to sidestep the current mess while getting useful power from this material.

That, and Japan is not a nuclear weapons state and might have political and/or constitutional difficulties with the concept. France not so much. Russia, political: hard to see them not help us make an own goal.

U.S. Navy might have both operational difficulties, and perhaps some entrenched resistance, to the concept of Russian nuclear experts doing on-sight verification and inspection at highly classified U.S. facilities.

Russia might go for it, though. Thing is, since 1994 most international FNR research has migrated from Idaho to Russia. I haven’t researched it, but my guess is that Russia does their commercial FNR fuel blending and production free and in the clear.

Kirk Sorensen recently presented “Thorium and MSR Fuel Strategies“ at the 2016 MSR Workshop at ORNL, and the slides are available. They detail the chemical processing in a LFTR, as well as a variant processes for spent fuel, allowing the TRUs to be consumed and the remaining clean uranium to be set aside. It would also be useful to consider how MOX might fuel conventional reactors while simultaneously kickstarting the more attractive thorium fuel cycle.

The question of past economics aside, can the MFFF be repurposed to produce Pu/Th MOX fuel instead? Conventional LEU MOX may result in a distribution of isotopes useless for weapons, but it will also be unattractive for fuel. Choosing the LEU path will ultimately grow the amount of spent fuel, including plutonium and other TRUs. The “waste” from Pu/Th MOX on the other hand is almost a perfect feed for molten salt reactors, which could actually eliminate spent fuel and TRUs, rather than just pushing the problem further down the road.

My understanding is that fast-spectrum reactors aren’t terribly sensitive to the Pu isotopic mix (some isotopes have slightly different cross-sections than others but the fission probability of all of them is very high), but I’m hardly an expert on these matters.

Monju did require a fuel fix of some type after its long hiatus, but the nature of this was never specified. My suspicion is that it was due to the (relatively rapid) decay of Pu-238 to U-234; nothing else goes fast enough to make a big difference in just a few years.

Interesting link, thanks. You can infer the perfomance as fuel from fig 10 and table 1. Of the fissions that do happen, 50%,45% and 5% eequred 1, 2 and 3 neutrons. That would be 1.55 neutrons per fissio, not too bad. But accordin to table 1 calc 14, after 3 years in Superphenix with flux 4e15 only 2.15 of 12.9 kg act have fissioned. But 3.17 kg of U234 precursers have been generated, which reqire another 1.45 n per fission, plus another 0.7 n from .86 kg Cm isotope which require at least 2 n each. Overall as good as fuel as wet manure. Burns eventually but requires lots of real fuel to get going.

I dug up this reference on the fission X-section of U-234, which indicates roughly 1 barn @ 1 MeV. While it may be a neutron-sucker in a blanket with neutrons at a few eV, I suspect that it is going to be fairly easily fissioned in a fast spectrum.

The minor actinide percentage in the outer core is given in the Table 6 because the transuranic enrichment is the highest in that region because of the enrichment splitting. This driver fuel Am&Cm is effectively burned in the active core to the point where its quantity is not accumulating in the HT-SFR fuel cycle.

Get the LFTR design certified and built first then let’s see how it performs. If there still is surplus Pu waiting to be turned into MOX, then we can see if this pathway is worthwhile over burning the surplus Pu as MOX in current LWRs. I would expect that the fuel design work and necessary testing-fuel qualification for Th-based MOX would not be an easier path than what has been done to date to use MOX in LWRs.

Re: “Aside: I’m convinced that fear of the plutonium economy was created and stoked by people who really liked the way the hydrocarbon economy was working for them. End Aside.”

I think while that may be in part accurate, it’s my experience that the majority of people have genuine Hollywood and pop-culture stroked fears about plutonium quite apart from any affection or thought for fossil fuels. Here at NYC’s esteemed Hall of Science in Queens, plutonium is only mentioned as bomb making material with a small (regrettably) redeeming aside that it keeps Mars Rovers rolling. Not one TV or movie as been made for decades that mentions plutonium in a positive light. (Does anyone bristle at that scene in the original “The Thing” film where the scientist is telling the soldiers and reporter of the gifts science has brought mankind like splitting the atom and the reporter snickers; ‘Yea, that was a big help!”) So saying, I don’t have to mention how the media regards plutonium. Again, winning hearts and favors for nuclear energy is front-most and ever an advertisement war.

Who do you think paid for the “Hollywood and pop culture stoked fears about plutonium?”

Have you ever read Sinclair Lewis’s “Oil?” Do you know how influential oil and gas sponsorship was in developing Hollywood and creating propaganda and mythology? Do you know how influential the coal, oil and gas industry were in establishing US foreign policy and how tightly they are tied into the MIC that Eisenhower warned about?

A shame that. As you well know, during Walt Disney’s hey day, nuclear energy was getting some pretty positive press.

When we discuss media induced ignorance about nuclear energy and radiation, we tend to think that we are referring to John Q. And truly, when the discussions here turn technical, this John Q doesn’t wade in too deep before he’s hopelessly lost. So, it doesn’t take much FUD to fill such a brain with ignorance and false info, planted nurtured to serve an agenda. And energy policies aren’t the only politically driven agenda of the day that is well served by carefully cultivated widespread ignorance. Watching the electoral cycle run its course, I am stricken by the blatant demonstration of ignorance that is exhibited by the candidates themselves, never mind John Q. They, (God help us), one or the other, will determine policy. What makes them more capable of understanding science, at the depth that policy should be decided on, than I am? Point being, they are probably as ignorant of the science behind safe NE as John Q is. So, enter lobbyists with an agenda, buying advisors with an agenda, advising a President and his cabinet with an agenda….and zoom, down the tubes we go. For quite sime time now, on here, I have lamented, strongly, how screwed up, and despicably corrupt, Washington is. If you’re watching this clown show campaign season, and you disagree, you ain’t paying attention. And you think either one of these Bozos will base energy policy on fact and sound science? Dream on.

Our choice in November isn’t as binary as the media and political establishment would like you to think.

Gary Johnson and Bill Weld are legitimate, experienced politicians and problem solvers. They were both two term governors who were officially members of the Republican Party in states with Democratic Party in the majority of voters.

Don’t let people tell you that America has a two party system and that any vote cast for a third or forth party candidate is wasted.

If you don’t think it is an ENFORCED two party system, Rod, I don’t know how you can draw that hold that view. The blatant and purposeful exclusion of third party candidates from participating in the presidential electoral race is glaring evidence contrary to your statement.

And if you are talking about a strong vibrant democracy led by moral and laudable leaders, ANY vote this time around is a wasted vote. No matter how this embarrassing spectacle ends, we lose.

Rod, MOX has consistently demonstrated little to no value either in (1) getting rid of used nuclear fuel (it only recycles 1% of a fuel bundle) or (2) offsetting the cost of uranium fuel used in reactors. MOX just displaces fuel in an existing reactor with a more expensive fuel. What’s the point?

Integral fast reactors, however, can recycle plutonium and do exactly as you suggest in your article – provide up to a 1,000 years of fuel-reliable energy. Additionally, they can get rid of long-lived actinides at the same time. All while generating additional clean energy.

The MFFF has nothing to do with recycling Pu from commercial fuel assemblies.

I wouldn’t have chosen it as the best way to use 34 tons of material taken from the weapons stockpile, but given the fact that the decision was made and funded to the point of a 70% complete construction project, I’d rather complete the facility than start all over.

Minor comment: Nothing heavier than Li-7 was made in the big bang. All elements heavier than iron and nickel, including neutron-rich thorium, uranium, and plutonium, were made in supernovae explosions that involved the production of neutron stars. However, all of the isotopes of plutonium have significantly shorter half-lives than the age of the solar system, 4.5 billion years, so all of the plutonium used on Earth are made in nuclear reactors. The plutonium that powers radioisotope thermoelectric generators, Pu-238, used in the space program is not a fissile form of plutonium, as is the weapons-grade Pu-239.

More general comment: Although I am not an expert of fuel fabrication for reactors that use solid fuel elements, my impression is that MOX fabrication starting with commercial fuel assemblies is difficult and expensive because the composition of Pu/actinides from available sources is different depending on the reactor involved and the length of time that the spent fuel has been in storage. As a consequence, getting uniformity of the fuel pellets is difficult. Inhomogenieties can result in “hot spots” that compromise one or more fuel pellets and result in the release of fission products during a burning cycle.

The difficulty should be less with fabrication of fuel from weapons-grade plutonium with a certified pedigree, as you imply in your reply to huntster. But the most suitable reactor for getting rid of all forms of unwanted plutonium/actinides is a molten-salt reactor (MSR) where the nuclear fuel iis dissolved in a liquid fluoride salt automatically made homogeneous through turbulent mixing by pumping it through pipes at a sufficiently high speed. Moreover, a fast neutron-spectrum is not needed if the MSR is a breeder that produces U-233 from Th-232 because the excess neutrons released by fissioning U-233 can be used to destroy the Pu/actinides completely simply by recirculating these species through the reactor core until they are all gone. In the case of destroying weapons-grade plutonium, because of the limited solubility of PuF3 in liquid fluoride salts, it is best just to fluorinate the Pu-239 directly, thereby saving the expense of down-blending the plutonium.

I remind all that the British nuclear regulatory agency is reviewing the GE-Hitachi PRISM for use in eliminating their excess weapons plutonium stocks. The plan is to denature the plutonium in about 6 years and use the result to generate electricity for about 60 years.

The review is scheduled to be completed in December. If positive, the USA could proceed to do the same. I suspect that the cost would be far less, far, far less than completing the PUREX/MOX facility.

There is an interesting paper from Georgia Tech describing connecting a PRISM to a thermal store. The turbine/generator is only connected to the thermal store, providing load following. More important, according to the article, such an arrangement is not subject to NRC oversight.

Unfortunately their study failed to recognize that BPA, is public power financed at sub 3% long term bond rates reducing the calculated power costs to the under 4 cents a kwh range provided all in by the public power Energy Northwest reactor at Tricities.

Why studies always use the notoriously inefficient American private power is beyond me.

I’m not sure I follow. As I read it, Abel and Petrovic only used BPA for their wind and reliable generation profile, so they might spec their load following requirements for use where wind has grid priority.

IIRC NuScale uses BPA generation data the same way. No, it doesn’t make economic sense to pay for the same electricity twice, but that’s the subsidy framework we’ve elected, and reliable generators have to deal with it.

As FShu points out, all the actinides were produced in supernovae and not the big bang. Which is good otherwise the fissile content of Uranium would be about 1000 times lower and the plutonium economy could never have started. I fully agree on your assessment of the political reasons for the demonisation of the plutonium economy.

“Though its first use was in explosives,… Plutonium’s real attraction to specialists is the fact that it can be readily produced from U-238, which is a mostly useless isotope that represents 99.3% of naturally occurring uranium.”

“Even without breeding, plutonium is a useful fuel source; 25-40% of the energy produced during the reactor residence time of conventional nuclear fuel comes from plutonium fission. ”

So, really, U-238 is NOT mostly useless, even in conventional, once-through power plants. Fast fission makes it even more directly useful, in both power plants and in explosives.

“it has been difficult for the MFFF contractors to attract and retain the talented management and inspired workers needed to complete a challenging, one-of-a-kind project in a relatively remote part of the country.”

“but given the fact that the decision was made and funded to the point of a 70% complete construction project, I’d rather complete the facility than start all over.”

It would be interesting to see lists of abandoned federal or nuclear projects versus (estimated) percent complete. Cutting your losses is another relevant concept, along with the adage that the last 10% takes 90% of the effort/cost.

“The MFFF has nothing to do with recycling Pu from commercial fuel assemblies.”

Other than the part where you demonstrate processing Pu and making commercial MOX fuel with it.

That’s like saying Shine Medical Technology’s accelerator-driven, subcritical liquid reactor has nothing to do with liquid reactors. If it works, a good demo of similar technology never hurts.